


After All You Put Me Through

by JustARandomIdiot



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Autistic Alana Beck, Canon Compliant, Emotional Healing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Sincerely Us: Gift Exchange (Dear Evan Hansen), for the deh summer gift exchange, its just the way this fic starts out the interactions within it cant be romantic, this fic is platonic but you can entirely view this as pre galaxy girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustARandomIdiot/pseuds/JustARandomIdiot
Summary: It’s been four months since Alana released Connor’s suicide note. With the guilt eating away at her for what she did, she just wants to forget she ever did that and try to move on with her life.Except Zoe wants to meet up in person.Alana can’t say she’s thrilled about that. More like downright terrified. Because there’s no way that the girl she had accidentally ruined the life of was going to let her live it down.For the Sincerely Me Summer Gift Exchange.
Relationships: Alana Beck & Zoe Murphy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8
Collections: Autistic Girls/Women Gift Exchange





	After All You Put Me Through

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for pheacas on Tumblr for the Sincerely Us Gift Exchange.
> 
> Prompt chosen: Post-canon, Alana helping Zoe cope after the events of the musical. Alana would probably be coming over to discuss what had happened in the disaster that was releasing the note, and Zoe just breaks down and cries in front of Alana, something she’s been holding back for so long. It’s awkward, but Alana helps as best as she can to comfort Zoe.
> 
> It's been a while since I've been involved in the DEH fandom, oof. This musical is still very dear and important to me though, and this was a fun fic to write after how long of not writing DEH characters (not that I wrote much for the fandom, lol)
> 
> Things to note: Alana is a character I project onto, so many of her traits in this fic are based on myself. In the tags, I said she’s autistic in here because I headcanon her as autistic, and she is written based on my experiences as someone who believes they’re undiagnosed autistic for several reasons.
> 
> Also, while I know this is a fanfic, the prompt also requested that if fanart, to portray Samantha Williams' Alana and Mallory Bechtel's or Kaitlyn Santa Juana's Zoe. I don't have any experience writing any of their versions of the characters (not to mention that I don't actually know how Samantha and Kaitlyn portray their characters) so this wasn't really written with those actors in mind. (If it works to imagine their portrayals, feel free to do so! I didn't put any descriptors of the characters, so hopefully it still works. Though the art included in this fic portrays Mallory rather than Kaitlyn, you can still imagine Kaitlyn if you prefer!)
> 
> With that said, hope you enjoy!

Four months.

It’d been four months since she released the suicide note.

The Connor Project hype had died down by this point, but it was still going strong. Every time she checked the Kickstarter page, the money donated was always higher than when she last checked it, even though they had surpassed the initial goal long ago. (The money had already been sent to restore the orchard when they had reached the goal.) But that didn’t stop people from donating, showing their support for what The Connor Project stood for.

Though sometimes, Alana found herself wishing she hadn’t been a part of The Connor Project. Was she selfish for that?

When Evan had first proposed it, she had been onboard with the Project right away. Come on, a project dedicated to showing that everyone mattered, and that no one deserved to be forgotten? What was there _not_ to love? Especially for a black girl who was trying to make sure she was seen and remembered in a world that hated her.

As the Project went on and gained more traction, Alana soon found herself exhausted from managing it. Of course, she had put a lot of responsibility onto herself, being the Connor Project co-president, associate treasurer, media consultant, chief technology officer, and assistant creative director/public policy director for creative public policy initiatives for The Connor Project. Sure it would’ve been easier to allow Jared or Evan to take on more roles (not to mention it _was_ Evan’s idea to start The Connor Project), but there was that part of her that didn’t really trust them to take the responsibility.

Which she was probably right about. After the speech, Jared eventually stopped assisting her and Evan with the Project. Not long after the Kickstarter campaign was launched, Evan seemed to stop caring about the Project. Of course. It was like almost every group project she had been a part of: she had to do all the work. Not to mention the inconsistencies of the emails.

Then Evan showed her the suicide note. If she could go back in time and change one thing, it’d be the release of the suicide note.

After almost three weeks of doing nothing, Evan had given her what she thought in the moment was the best way to get attention for the Kickstarter campaign. And you know what? It worked.

It worked too well.

Connor’s words had hit her hard, writing in that letter a feeling she was very familiar with. And it seemed to resonate with The Connor Project community as well. It’d been great to see how others were impacted by Connor’s words.

Until people started targeting the Murphys.

Everyone had been so quick to throw the blame onto them. Alana didn’t know them as well as Evan, but from what she had seen when she met them, they weren’t as bad as everyone was making them out to be. They didn’t deserve this, this wasn’t supposed to happen!

She worked to delete the comments containing death threats and hate. (Were those her classmates? Why were they allowing this harassment?) But they were like a hydra: with each one she deleted, it seemed three more would come in its place.

But she didn’t want to take it down. Wasn’t it important to show people what Connor felt? That no one was alone?

Evan kept calling her, texting her, messaging her in any way he could, begging for her to take down the letter.

Seeing the notifications made her sick. She felt horrible, like she did something wrong.

But she didn’t do something wrong, right? Wasn’t this the right thing? It helped reach the goal, it touched people, it made people feel mattered.

So she ignored the notifications. She muted Evan’s texts. She deleted his voice messages. She did what she could to keep them out of her head, because they felt just as bad as the hate comments that the Murphys were getting.

Which kept coming.

Alana could no longer control them.

Posted in the comments by the next day was the Murphys’ personal info: their emails, their address, their phone numbers. People were posting death threats, photos of their house, what looked like _Zoe Murphy stepping out of her car_. (Where did people get these photos? _Why_ did people get these photos?)

Alana couldn’t stop shaking.

It was getting too out of hand.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

She took the letter down.

And trying to ignore her tight chest, she got to work to send the money needed to restore the orchard.

Except she couldn’t ignore what she did.

The letter was meant to show how hard Connor had struggled, how alone he had been, to let others know that they weren’t the only ones who felt that way. She thought she was doing good by sharing it. 

Except it wasn’t good. Look what she did.

The letter may have been deleted off The Connor Project website— along with the nasty comments— but it was enough time for it to circulate all over the internet. There were copies of it all over Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, any social media site she could think of. And the comments about the Murphys followed it to those platforms.

Alana wanted to throw up.

So she spent the next four months more involved in her studies and extracurriculars. As long as she was doing something, she could forget about The Connor Project and that absolute disaster (excluding when classmates and teachers would bring it up to her, though she always steered away from that topic when they did). Sure, it meant less sleep, but laying in bed was too much time alone with her thoughts. She avoided Jared, she avoided Evan, and she avoided Zoe, keeping her distance and not making eye contact.

And for those four months, she thought she really could forget about it. Move on with her life, put it behind her, be normal again.

Except that’s not how things work out, unfortunately.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she finished putting her textbooks away in her locker. Checking her notifications, she was surprised to see it wasn’t a text from her grandfather, like it usually was. It was a text from an unknown number.

Alana felt her heart stop as she read the message.

_Hey its Zoe. Connors sister. Meet me in the band room plz?_

Alana couldn’t stop staring at the text. What did Zoe want with her after how she hurt her? 

Her hands were shaking as she texted back.

_Where?_

_Room 103_

Alana gulped, her fingers hovering over her phone screen. She couldn’t do this. 

She typed a simple reply.

_Sure!_

Zoe didn’t respond.

Just like that, Alana felt sick again.

She wanted to slap herself. Why was she doing this? Zoe hated her for what she did, didn’t she? Alana did something awful to her, to her family, something unforgivable.

Oh God, Zoe was going to yell at her. Shame her. Make her feel worse than she already did. Remind her of what a horrible person she was for releasing Connor’s suicide note.

It took all her energy to not collapse into a ball right there.

No, she couldn’t break down here. Closing her eyes, Alana focused on her breathing. Inhale for seven seconds, hold for eight, exhale for nine, hold for eight. Repeat.

Once she was calm (or at least, as calm as she could get herself to be), she pushed up her glasses and made her way to the band room.

_Focus on your walking, not the fact that Zoe probably wants to kill you right now._

Easier said than done.

Each step felt heavy, like a step closer towards her death.

She blinked back tears.

Oh God, what was she _doing_?

She shouldn’t do this. Yeah, she should just turn around right now, drive back home to her grandfather, pretend she never got the text. There was still time to go back.

Too soon, she arrived.

Her breath caught in her throat. Slowly, she lifted a trembling hand towards the door handle. 

She couldn’t grab it. 

She couldn’t breathe.

_No! Focus!_

With a gulp, she closed her eyes and grabbed the handle. No turning back. She was going to go in and get this over with. Her lips pursed tightly, she swung the door open.

No one else was inside except for Zoe, who was sitting in one of the chairs in the center of the room. On her lap, she held an acoustic guitar, her fingers on the fretboard for some sort of chord, but she wasn’t playing anything. 

(Alana knew from Evan that Zoe played guitar in jazz band. She was sure that a jazz band guitar was electric. Did Zoe also do acoustic?)

Alana forced a smile. The same smile she forced for everyone. The one she _practiced_ for everyone. “H-hey.” She hated how her voice shook.

Zoe looked up, offering a small smile in return. It clearly wasn’t happy. “Hey.”

Silence. 

Alana fidgeted with her backpack straps.

“Sorry if it’s weird that I got your number,” Zoe finally spoke as she stood up. She gently placed the guitar back in its case, placing it down next to her seat. (Did she just bring a guitar to school?) “Since you’re friends with everyone in the school, it wasn’t really hard to ask someone for it.”

Alana wanted to correct her— she didn’t have friends, she had _acquaintances_. There was a difference.

“I just didn’t know who else to talk to about it.”

Alana blinked. “Oh?”

Zoe looked away, rubbing her arm, sighing. “About… about The Connor Project.”

Alana’s heart dropped. Of course that was what this was about. She knew it. 

The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Look, I’m really sorry about the letter. I-I shouldn’t have released it, I know, and I know I should’ve— I should’ve apologized sooner, but I was just afraid that—”

“It’s not your fault.”

“—you would yell at me or you… what?” Sorry, it _wasn’t_ her fault?

Was Zoe trying to make her feel better? Of course it was her fault! She was the reason that people decided to harass Zoe and her family.

“Jared said that… he said that you didn’t know…”

Did Alana want to know? “... know what?”

Zoe pursed her lip, sitting back down in her chair. “Connor… didn’t write the letter…” She blinked quickly, her lip beginning to quiver. Her voice was softer, shaking. “Evan wrote it.”

Alana didn’t believe it. She must’ve misheard. “... I’m sorry?”

Tears were beginning to run down Zoe’s cheeks. “Evan wrote the damn letter.” She visibly swallowed. Her hands curled into fists on her knees. “They weren’t… they were never… they weren’t friends… Evan, h-he… he said that Connor… s-stole the letter from him, a-and…” She blinked again, more tears falling.

Alana couldn’t believe it. Evan wrote the letter. _Evan_ wrote the letter. _Evan fricking Hansen_ wrote the letter.

No, Evan wasn’t like that, right? Zoe had to be joking. Alana would’ve _thought_ she was joking.

If it weren’t for the fact that Zoe was sitting here in the middle of the band room, crying right in front of her.

Cautiously, Alana approached her, placing down her backpack on the floor next to Zoe’s as she took the seat next to her. She bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at her.

Alana was never good in these situations. Emotions were weird. _Her_ emotions were weird. _Other_ people’s emotions were weird. You couldn’t rehearse what you would say in something like this. There was never one good script to go by when it came to other people’s emotions.

“Are… are you okay?”

With emotions, Alana was awkward. She never knew what to do. She never knew how to comfort people. She never knew the right words to say, if there _were_ right words to say. She hated going into anything without a script in her head.

Zoe blinked again and shook her head, taking in a shaky breath. Her cheeks and nose grew red, her face scrunched up, and her eyes were very watery. “Everything is horrible,” she whispered.

Alana took one of her hands into her own, gently massaging it with her thumbs. (That was what people did to help comfort others, right? Alana didn’t know. She really hoped it helped somehow.)

Zoe took another shaky breath. “I hate everything.” Her nose began to run. She wiped it with her sleeve. “I hate Evan, I… I hate how I loved him, I hate how I— I-I believed him, I hate the stupid letter, I—” She hiccuped, her voice cracking as she spoke. “I wish… I wish I never met him. I wish my brother… I wish he never stole that fucking letter, I— I-I…”

  


Zoe hiccuped again, before collapsing into sobs. She flung herself onto Alana, wrapping her arms tightly around her.

Alana didn’t know what to do. What do you do when someone you barely knew burst into tears right in front of you, sobbing into your shoulder and clinging tightly onto you? Do you do something? Do you _say_ something?

But Alana didn’t know what to say. What, did she do the usual “It’ll be all right” like everyone else settled with? But she didn’t know if it’d be all right. She couldn’t just give Zoe that false hope!

But she couldn’t just let Zoe cry here forever while she did nothing. So she settled on wrapping her own arms around the girl, gently rubbing her back. The same way her grandmother used to do when she got upset as a young girl.

“Why did this have to happen?” Zoe whispered in her ear, her breaths very shaky.

Alana bit the inside of her cheek. How could she answer that? “I don’t know,” she confessed after several moments of silence.

And the two of them sat there together quietly, no movement or sound between them, aside from Zoe’s sobs. Alana continued to hold her and rub her back, not knowing what else she could do as she processed her own feelings.

How could Evan do this? _Why_ would Evan do this? Did The Connor Project mean _nothing_ to him? What about his speech, did he mean _any_ of that?

For a moment, there was a voice in Alana’s mind that told her to blame Evan for hurting the Murphys. _He_ was the one who wrote the letter. _He_ was the one that wasn’t taking The Connor Project seriously like she was. _He_ was the one that sent it to her in the first place.

_He_ was the one who ruined their lives.

But no, even if Evan had started this whole mess, she still played a part in hurting Zoe and her family. _She_ was the one who posted it despite Evan’s protests. Besides, pushing the blame onto someone else wasn’t going to help anyone, especially Zoe.

Honestly, Alana had no idea how to help her. But she could try.

“Can I… can I show you something?” she asked, a little hesitantly. Alana hadn’t planned for this. She didn’t know if this would work.

Zoe pulled away slowly, wiping her nose with her sleeve once more. Tears were still rolling down her cheeks, but not as much. That was good, right? Her face was red, and her eyes were puffy, but she wasn’t crying as hard.

“Sure,” she whispered hoarsely.

The two girls got to their feet, Zoe still sniffling a little.

“We have to drive there, though,” Alana said. “Do you need to be dropped back off here?”

Zoe shook her head. “I-I asked my dad to drop me off at school this morning.”

And Alana quickly realized why. She must’ve been too terrified to drive on her own, given the threats she and her family had received. Alana felt her stomach twist. She couldn’t blame her.

Trying to push those thoughts aside, she picked up her bag along with Zoe’s, figuring that it was proper to help carry her stuff given her mood. She considered also taking the guitar case, but Zoe picked it up before she could reach for it.

It was a silent walk to the student parking lot, the hallway and courtyard mostly empty given that students had already gone home, waited at the car line, or were in some sort of after school activity. Even when they reached Alana’s car, they still didn’t say a word. (Alana just silently placed their bags in the backseat, Zoe placing her guitar case on the floor of the car.)

Alana tried to fill the silence up with music from the radio (or more specifically, the Bluetooth radio connected to her phone). Even so, the drive felt awkward, with Alana focused on the road and Zoe staring out the window, unmoving, no sound coming from either of them.

(It probably didn’t help that the playlist Alana chose was filled with various Disney songs. It was kind of embarrassing, and it was very out of place given their mood. Not to mention it made her feel childish.)

The drive wasn’t too long— about 25 minutes. Alana had only been here a couple times, mostly to check the place out. This was the first time she had decided to really come ever since she donated the money to restore it.

After parking, she turned to Zoe, who looked around with wide eyes. “Is this…?”

Alana nodded, turning back to look at the steering wheel. “Yeah. I-I know that this probably isn’t the best place to go after you told me that it was… all a lie, but um… I thought it’d be nice if you found that this part… restoring the orchard? That part wasn’t a lie.”

Her hands fidgeted in her lap, playing with the edge of her sweater. “All the money we got was sent to restore this place, I made sure of it. Everything else the project gets now is donated to organizations like The Trevor Project or Active Minds— organizations that work to help people like Connor and end suicide.”

She pursed her lips before continuing. “I know this doesn’t make up for what I did… or for what Evan did. What we _both_ did. We hurt you, and we can’t take that back. I can’t speak for Evan, but… I hope this at least helps you somehow?” She looked back up at Zoe, not exactly looking her in the eye. Eye contact was something she was never great with, but it felt wrong if she just continued to look away.

Zoe looked back out the window for several moments before turning back to Alana. “Can we go in?”

So they did. Alana followed Zoe as they walked around the orchard, Zoe pointing out the field of clovers where she and Connor used to look for four leaf ones, and the creek her father had crash landed a toy plane he once had. She told Alana stories of her memories of the orchard: the picnics, the playing, so many things that she said she never thought about in years.

“I forgot about all the fun times I had here,” she said as the two of them sat under the shade of a sycamore tree. They leaned against its trunk, staring up at the blue sky. “I never even realized I missed this place.”

She paused for a few moments. “When Evan said he and Connor came here, I still tried to forget it all… my brother hurt me, and I didn’t want to remember him the way everyone else remembered him. But now… I think I _do_ miss him. Not the person who screamed at me while I hid in my room, but the person he was when we were kids. The one who played with me, the one always telling me jokes and trying to make me laugh…”

Zoe had tears rolling down her cheeks again, but she was smiling. Not the unhappy smile she had given Alana in the music room earlier; it was soft, gentle as she stared out at nothing.

“He used to be different. We used to get along so well. But then he changed, and we started getting distant…” She sighed, her hand fiddling with a couple blades of grass by her side. “I wish we could’ve stayed the way we used to be when we were kids.”

Emotions were still something Alana wasn’t good with. Heck, she wasn’t used to dealing with this much of someone else’s. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, not sure what else to say.

Zoe continued staring out to the open, silence sitting between the two of them for the next few minutes.

“Thank you,” she finally said, turning to Alana with that same soft smile, the one Zoe had when she was reminiscing her old memories.

Alana blinked, pushing up her glasses. “For what?”

Zoe motioned to the orchard around them. “For this. I know that The Connor Project ended up… horrible…”

(Alana winced as she said this.)

“But it wasn’t… it wasn’t all bad.” Zoe looked back out at the field, some families seen in the distance as they visited the orchard as well. “You guys helped people, you managed to reopen this place…” She paused, her smile never faltering. “I think… I think I might come here again.”

“Oh?”

Zoe nodded, staring up at the branches they sat under. “It’s nice to just sit here. I might even play my guitar here.”

Alana smiled back at the thought. “That sounds nice.”

And the two of them continued to sit there, enjoying the peaceful quiet, the gentle breeze against their faces, and the birds singing above their heads.

“And Alana?”

“Hm?”

“I forgive you. About releasing the letter.”

Alana hesitated. “...Really? Even after… after everything that happened because of me?”

Zoe nodded, her soft smile never leaving her face.

Alana never liked to say she had friends. She was scared of getting close to people. She was afraid of being too clingy, or being annoying, or just not being good enough. She didn’t think anyone would want to be her friend anyway.

“Acquaintance” was a safer word. It meant that they knew each other, but they didn’t need the commitment of friendship, just a friendly hello every once in a while. Maybe a conversation here and there, but not a long one.

Except sitting here in the orchard with Zoe, “acquaintance” wasn’t good enough. Spending the afternoon with her, Alana felt closer to her than to anyone outside of her family.

Alana didn’t have friends, but maybe she could start with Zoe. With everything Zoe was going through right now, she needed someone to help her through it.

If Alana was that someone, then she hoped she could be a good enough friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Like it says in the notes, this fic isn’t romantic given the circumstances, but _can_ be seen as pre Galaxy Girls, like they could become canon in the future after this fic.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this fic!


End file.
